Mass Migration Coming

Spin a globe and you will see that most of the Earth will be blue and that's because 71% of Earth is sea which leave approximately a total land surface area of Earth of about 57,308,738 square miles but subtract from that the 29% which is desert and the 24% which is mountainous, that leaves us with a total land area of 24,642,757 square miles which is habitable and due to Climate Change, that is shrinking.
The United Nations have said that a large swathe of the Global population, as many as three billion people, are expected to be displaced by the effects of Global Warming by the end of the century, and these people are going to have to go somewhere in a mass migration but the problem is that every inch of land is already occupied and the World is split up into nations with borders.
I have already set out my idea's for the World to come together as one nation with no borders and with as many as a third of the population being forced to migrate due to global temperatures increases, sea level rise and extreme weather in lands which will become increasingly more difficult to live in,
it may be an idea which will have to happen.  
In 2021, there were 90 million people displaced by Climate disasters such as floods, heat, drought, fires, storms and coastal erosion and in 2022 there was 100 million with more people now dying from heatwaves than wars which led the UN appeal to global leaders to ease the Climate Change migration
as: 'We cannot leave millions of displaced people to face the consequences of a changing climate'.
The problem is our political borders stopping peoples movement so we may have to reconsider them and think on a global borderless scale because it is not a problem which will go away, the issue is coming due to our carelessness towards our own environment over centuries and each year it will
grow into more of a problem as billions of people are forced out of the land they live in and it will up to us to help our fellow humans and not squabble over which nation will take them inside their borders because through no fault of their own, they literally have nowhere else to go.

Today Is...World No Tobacco Day

When i was a smoker i would only smoke low tar cigarettes as in my mind they were less harmful than normal cigarettes although i actually knew they were just as bad and i began vaping in 2012 and i have long advocated them to smokers already addicted to nicotine but i am uneasy i am about how attractive they are to non-smokers.
They are undoubtedly a great way to give up the much more dangerous tobacco cigarettes but the reverse is also true that e-cigarettes, and the enticing flavours, attract non-smokers, and worryingly youngsters, to try vaping and thereby introducing them to the same dangerous addiction.
The best course of action is to not smoke at all and the UK's medicines regulatory body, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, have said that e-cigarettes could help save 57,000 British lives over the next decade and they are undoubtedly a great way to give up the much more dangerous tobacco cigarettes.
Something that nobody tells you when you switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes is that because you are inhaling nicotine, you actually get more from the e-cigarette than you do from smoking a cigarette because you don't know when you have had a cigarettes worth and you just keep inhaling and the result of the extra nicotine is some very funky dreams.
Usually quite fun, they can be very vivid, lucid and weird dreams especially if you have a good blast before you go to bed but the flip side is the nightmares are also much more terrifying as i found out which can be very, very scary.
Inhaling nicotine is not dangerous in itself especially when compared to the many poisonous chemicals contained in tobacco smoke and nicotine does not cause cancer unlike tobacco in normal cigarettes and doctors, public health experts, cancer charities and governments in the UK all agree that, based on the current evidence, e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes but it is the 'based on current evidence'.
As vaping is still very new and the effects are unknown, the only way to be safe is to not smoke or vape in the first place, it is expensive, dangerous to your health and you will spend the rest of your life trying to stop again and worrying that every time you get a sore throat that it's cancer.
Figures released from the Office for National Statistics show that less young people are lighting up with 20% of 18-24 year olds smoking compared to 25% five years ago. Even among the age group most likely to smoke, 24- to 35-year-olds, about 40% smoke compared to 65% previously.
Where before the clouds of smoke above the smoking areas would be cigarette smoke, now it is plumes of sweet smelling vapour and i have not seen a decline in the numbers huddled under the smoking area in recent years, just a change in what they are puffing on.

Today Is...National Creativity Day

I know a lot of people who have an idea for a novel and some who are waiting for inspiration to smack them around the face but i know, and they know, that they won't ever get around to writing it because being creative is hard.
Creating a piece of legendary anything demands effort, to write you must slave over a keyboard for months, to paint means weeks crunched over an easel and even to bake a cake of such excellence that Paul Hollywood would wet himself means putting in the kitchen hours.
Oscar Wilde said that he spent all morning taking a comma out of his poem and all afternoon putting it back in but in this busy world you're not going to do that because you have other things to take care of. More important things such as watching Ghost Adventures. (That team sure do scream a lot for people who go out of their way to try and find spirits).
So if you are determined to be creative then lets see what science says should help you in your creative pursuits.
Scientists found that people who were tested during their least optimal time of day (when they were at their most tired) were more effective at solving puzzles that required creative thinking than when they were at their most alert and able to focus properly.
Despite what most people think, that whole "peace and quiet" thing isn't worth a dink when it comes to creativity. Science says what your creative process craves instead is a certain level of noise and distraction as your brain switches into high gear when it is forced to tune out moderate background noise.
Trying to boost your brain by listening to Thrash Metal will only hurt your creative process but being in love helps.
Throughout history, love has served as the inspiration for great works of art, poetry, songs and many other bursts of creative behavior and you don't actually have to be in love either, according to research, all you need to do is think about being in love to get you creative juices flowing.
Science therefore says to be at your most creative stay up late and get up early, flirt with the secretary/window cleaner and stop shouting at the kids to shut up.

World's Deadliest Joke Revealed

Something people say which has never made sense to me is that the pen is mightier than the sword but good luck if you find yourself in the situation when your opponent has a sword and all you have is a ballpoint because that isn't going to end well for you.
A quick google shows that the famous saying signifies that the power of writing is eternal, while the violent power of the sword is short-lived which doesn't alter the reality that if you have a biro against a cutlass you not generally in control of the situation but words do have power to kill as one Greek
philosopher, Chrysippus of Soli, found out in 206BC when on hearing a joke, laughed so much that he dropped dead.
Now i legally am unable to tell you what the joke is in English in case it falls into the wrong hands but due to the deadly nature of the joke, during the First World War the British Army tried to militarise it and had it translated into German for the men going over the top to read out as they ran through an open field amid artillery fire while shouting the joke at the Germans but due to the Germans having absolutely no sense of humour and being completely impervious to joke warfare, they just shrugged and mowed down the advancing Tommies in their thousands.
The 11 word joke is said to have been deemed so funny that under the Geneva Convention it has been banned along with Chemical and Biological weapons and the only remaining surviving copy is currently sealed under concrete in a secret location, known only to the Prime Minister, in Shropshire but i can reveal that it includes a donkey and some figs and caused Chrysippus to suffer such a  laughing fit that he collapsed and started foaming at the mouth and then died but even revealing that much has sent my blood pressure dangerously high and i will need to seek urgent medical attention.  
There’s also a suggestion that Chrysippus was absolutely off his face on undiluted wine but i am not going to take any chances and propose to give the punchline to seeing the donkey eating figs in the Ancient Greek text, if you want to translate it then i am not responsible for any following consequences.
On seeing a donkey eating figs, someone said to Chrysippus 'Τώρα δώσε του λίγο κρασί να ξεπλύνει αυτά τα σύκα'.
You have been warned, these words can literally kill.

Today Is...The First Advertisement For Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has had four lives, the first one as a drug infused wine, then a drug infused medicine, then again as a drug infused soft drink and then a tooth rotting soft drink minus the hard drugs.
America in the 1860's was an era of Cowboys, Indians, pioneers, outlaws and guns but most importantly the Civil war and John Pemberton was a Chemist from Atlanta who ended up fighting on the Confederates side and as luck would have it, he was slashed with a sword during a cavalry battle with the Union Calvary. 
Being slashed with a sword may not sound all that lucky but as he was Chemist, he had access to the pain killer morphine and quickly became addicted so he went looking for a cure for this addiction and began to experiment with safer painkillers and came up with mixing booze and coca leaves and kola nuts, aka cocaine, and came up with Pemberton's French Wine Coca.
If you're thinking to yourself that combining a stimulant and a depressant into one concoction isn't the greatest of ideas then you are probably right but not long afterwards a local prohibition law was enacted and alcohol was banned.
For most people whose living was alcohol related, this would have spelt disaster but for Pemberton it was a second massive stroke of luck because he replaced the alcohol with carbonated water, kept the cocaine ingredients and sweetened it with obscene amounts of sugar and advertised it as a medicine which could cure headaches, relieve exhaustion, impotence and calm nerves, calling it Coca-Kola as reference to the two main ingredients.
In 1929 the cocaine element was removed altogether and they marketed it purely as a soft drink called Coca-Cola, the name change an attempt to obscure the drinks druggy origins but was great news for Dentists and Tooth Fairies everywhere and even the Nazi's got something out of it also.  
Coca-Cola played both sides during World War Two, supported the American troops but also making sure the Nazi's never got thirsty either. After the Coca-Cola factories ran out of syrup in Germany due to wartime restrictions, they invented a new drink just for the Nazis and called it Fanta. Thirsty work killing all those millions so nice of Coca-Cola to keep the Germans spirits up.

What Are Those Chinese Up To In Space?

While Russia is today's big bogeyman, China also gets it fair share of scare stories thrown at it and the latest is the   mysterious Chinese spacecraft which released an unidentified 'object' into orbit.
According to US Intelligence, the mysterious Chinese spacecraft has landed after nine months in orbit on a secret mission and the Chinese State Media did admit as much saying that the experiment had been a 'complete success'.
Hmmm....with no other details provided is obviously something a bit iffy but the Americans know that it was uncrewed, relatively small and the craft released an 'object' into orbit sometime in October which disappeared from their satellite tracking screens in January.
Obviously the only conclusion is that the sneaky Chinese have progressed from Weather Balloons to hiding space weapons above our heads and are positioning nukes or lasers in space ready to annihilate us in our beds so who could complain about a few more hundred billion being shoved towards the military to
keep us safe in our beds.
Hang on, what's this bit at the bottom of the intelligence report? They believe that the craft made use of a mechanical robot arm and they were practising satellite removal capability to repair damaged satellites or remove orbital debris which would explain the object disappearing, it was released and then grabbed again.
The Chinese developing the technology to repair their satellites isn't going to be scary enough to increase the U.S. Space Force's $30 billion budget so just say Chinese Secret Space Mission over and over until the Government agree to spend more on stopping those pesky Chinese satellite fixers.

Stitch Up Or Rantings Of A Moron?

It is amusing that the people who dropped Boris Johnson in the brown stuff over his further Coronavirus lock-down breaking was his own lawyers who handed over diaries which apparently show Boris Johnson holding meetings for friends and family while telling the rest of us that holding meetings with friends and family was strictly forbidden.
This led onto the Covid Investigation Committee demanding the WhatsApp messages from that periods which the Government are refusing to hand over as they are not relevant to which the head investigator replied she would be the one to decide what is relevant and has threatened them with court to obtain which obviously immediately makes you think they have something to hide from the Committee
Johnson has come out and said that it was 'absurd' that he broke his own rules which is exactly what he said before the irrefutable proof that he was doing exactly that si he is hardly someone who can be believed and to make an incredulous situation he has taken a leaf from his pal Donald Trump's playbook
and blamed it on a political stitch-up and paint him as a victim of some sinister deep state conspiracy, rather than his own ineptitude and incompetence although while that may have worked for Trump in America, it was met with a sigh of 'What a dickhead' over here as his stock has tumbled even with his own supporters.
One of his former Ministers said: 'FFS who on earth is spouting this bonkersness? Is he determined to turn our party into a skip fire? and i would say yep because Boris is not anything other than a completely selfish, egotistical moron who would rather drag everyone down with him rather than take the blame and we can only hope that it buries him and his ilk along with the right wing ideologically disastrous Conservatives for good.

Getting Around To It Later Maybe

It's probably fair to say that the Ukraine has had other things on it's mind over the past year, what with Russia pounding it daily with missiles and i have failed to see British towns turned to rubble by an invading Superpower so how despite everything the Zelenskyy Government have managed to build more onshore wind turbines than us over the last 12 months is a bit of a head scratcher.
While Ukraine has managed to hoist 19 turbines providing 114 Megawatts of power into action, Britain has managed just 2 which isn't a great look when a governments fighting for their very survival can get on and build almost 10 times more than our Government could muster.
The Sunak Government did promise to ease planning restrictions to allow more wind turbines, which is the cheapest source of electricity, to be built in answer to the soaring cost of electricity so maybe they have plans to build a shed-load very soon but as we found out with this Governments promise to build 40 new
hospitals (currently standing at nil built) we should be taking these plans with several barrels of salt but as we thankfully come to the fag end of the Conservative time in Government, the Labour Party has stepped in with their own pledges to make Britain 'a clean energy superpower' by setting up publicly owned energy company, GB Energy, to produce cheap, clean power in Britain'.
They have also said that there would be no investment in new oil and gas fields in Britain under a Labour government, scrapping the hundreds of North Sea oil and gas extraction licences it recently dolled out to companies, including many who had made donations of over £400,000 to the Conservatives which will go down as about as well as a invite to Boris Johnson to the Father of The Year Awards with them which means Labour have go this idea absolutely right.

Today Is...The Solar Eclipse From Which All Are Calculated

Ever since we have had a Moon, we have had Solar Eclipses although it is doubtful the Dinosaurs cared too much, they just carried on walking around and eating each other but us first humans are a more inquisitive bunch and we looked at it at wondered: 'Whats that all about then?' 
The oldest recorded eclipse was in 3340 BC, a drawing of overlapping concentric circles drawn onto a rock in Ireland which was probably a caveman trying to explain to his pal what had happened and in 1200 BC China was scribes which stated that the Sun had been eaten.
Obviously back in those days the idea of the celestial dance which is an Eclipses was unknown but the one which happened today in 585BC in present Day Turkey resulted in two warring armies stop hacking at each other, looked up at the sky as it turned into night and decided whatever God was in charge of the Sun wasn't happy that they were scrapping and shook hands and made peace instead.
This Solar Eclipse became the one from which all later Eclipses were accurately determined in advance of it's occurrence including the one in 100ad that Chinese Astronomer Zhang Heng tried to describe to his King, saying that that the Earth, Planets and Sun must all be spherical and tried to explain how the Moon reflects the light of the Sun and sometimes the Moon gets between the Sun and earth eclipses the light.
Even after repeating light here, big thing in way there, no light here, he gave up and decided that for them it was so far out of the box that he would have to invent binoculars for them to actually see the box.
It was not until 1605 that astronomer Johannes Kepler gave a scientific description of a total solar eclipse and received an asteroid and both a lunar and a Martian crater named after him for his efforts.

Today Is...Spring Bank Holiday

Bank Holidays happen several times a year, but no one actually knows what the holiday is in celebration of, to be fair i don't but it means a day off work we so don't care really.
In Britain, Good Friday and Christmas Day have always been customary holidays since time immemorial and in 1871 Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August and Boxing Day were added to the list in 1871 when Liberal politician and banker Sir John Lubbock instigated a law which said 'no person was compelled to make any payment or to do any act upon a bank holiday which he would not be compelled to do or make on Christmas Day or Good Friday, and the making of a payment or the doing
of an act on the following day was equivalent to doing it on the holiday' so thanks Sir Lubbock.
New Years Day was added to the list in 1974 which means that we know have 8 'Official' Days off when we get paid to sit at home watching TV which are gratefully received but still one of the lowest Bank Holidays in the World with Myanmar having 32 and Nepal 30 opportunities to wake up midweek at midday so still so ways to go for us Brits although we do get some use out of having a Royal Family because we tend to get a day off when a senior one is married, coronated or dies.   
When Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died, the most Googled question was 'Do we get a Day off?' which we did and we get another one when Charles III is crowned so woo hoo. Not that i will be watchign but woo-hoo anyway.
There is sometimes talk of making a few more Bank Holidays but the grumpy Government always poo-poo the idea and cite the loss of productivity as each Bank Holiday costs the economy £1.4bn. Miserable buggers.

Today Is...National Sorry Day (Australia)

After two years of sailing, Captain Cook landed in Botany Bay, Australia, stuck a flag in the soil and claimed it for Britain.
What the natives thought as they watched some strange white man babbling away in a foreign language is anyone guess or King George III's reaction when he was told he was now the owner of a land half a world and two years sailing away and which most travellers would die of scurvy before getting to but Britain did find a use for it, sending all it's criminals there.
For a nation where all of the wildlife is trying to kill you, Australia hasn't done bad for itself and we do have a bit of fun with the inventors of a bent stick that you can never throw away and i am sure that Australian migrants who make the move in the opposite direction also complain, they complain about everything else so it would be a shock if they never, but credit where it's due, they have a dark history but have a National Day to say sorry for it.
National Sorry Day, or the National Day of Healing, is an annual event that has been held in Australia to commemorate the 70 years of mistreatment of the country's Indigenous people where the Aboriginal children were separated from their families, with the intention of assimilating them into white Australian culture.
This resulted in what became known as the 'Stolen Generations' and the Government offered 'deep and sincere regret that Indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many Indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices'.
There are many other nations who should apologise for the injustices they performed on their own and other people but Australia is the only nation that i know of who have been big enough to admit them and apologise for them so even though it doesn't excuse their awful actions, credit where it is due and Australia deserve all the credit for this gesture

Today Is...International Missing Children’s Day

1993 was the Grunge years in music for me but in June of that year there was a different kind of song which got to number 7 in the UK Charts which would appear between the Nirvana and Pearl Jam videos which i always found quite hard to watch, because it's subject matter was wholly depressing.  
The song was Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train' and the video featured children who had gone missing along with their full name and when they had gone missing and these sections were tailored for different countries so the video for the United States version begins with 'There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America' while the UK version begins with "100,000 youth are lost on the streets of Britain'.  The video was directed by Tony Kaye and showed some difficult scenes of abuse, child prostitution and babies being stolen from pushchairs but what made it so hard to watch was that it was true, these things were really going on and the children whose name was on the screen were real, missing children.
After the video, the lead singer speaks direct to camera saying 'If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number' with the following screen showing a number one could contact.
The song came back to me today on a Guess The Year radio show and i did wonder if any of the kids in the video had actually been found and after Googling it i found an interview where Kaye said that 26 had been found although he didn't say if that was just in America or Worldwide although 26 is great, it is quite bittersweet.
In the UK Version of the video was Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who each went missing in 1991. Their remains were found in 2007 at a house in Margate, victims of Peter Tobin who was later convicted of both murders.
It also featured Mark Bartley who was kidnapped in 1992 and was recognised in the video by a man who knew Bartley was staying in the flat below him but by the time the police arrived, Bartley and his kidnapper were gone and he had never been seen since.
What is pleasing is that Kaye and Soul Asylum defied the Record Companies who didn't want the missing kids in the video, instead wanting more shots of the band so they could get better exposure but the band refused, and said the video with the kids stayed.
I'm not sure what Soul Asylum did next, i don't think i ever heard another song by them, but because of them 26 kids returned home or were located and they deserve a massive clap on the back for that.

Today Is...World Schizophrenia Day

I do love a good conspiracy theory, the nuttier the better and so i like all the 'proof' that the Moon landings were faked, that the Royals are a bunch of lizards and Elvis is still alive but sometimes the theories do have a profound effect on the rest of us such as the anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and the 5G spreading Covid-19 and then it stops being a bunch of weirdos being weird to having real life effects. 
It is easy to think that the conspiracy theory believers are a bit thick or useful idiots but that is too simple according to Psychologists who believe that there is a bit more going on, namely they are schizophrenic.
Professor Karen Douglas, from the University of Kent, has studied conspiracy theories and those who are fooled by them and considers that people who are taken in by the theories that include the suggestion that the Coronavirus was made in a Chinese laboratory turn to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs are not met.
'People are drawn to conspiracy theories when they feel powerless or are anxious' states Professor Karen 'and related to the need to maintain a positive view of the self and the groups they belong to'.
She adds that narcissistic people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories where the central core is that something is being covered up with the general idea that authorities and outside groups cannot be trusted and are hiding the truth.
It does seem to be more prevalent in the United States but she considers that to be more political, with left and right wing groups more suspicious of anyone not as left or right wing as them and the political extreme not so fierce in the UK.
The bad news is that once a conspiracy theory has gained traction it is hard to change peoples minds regardless of how irrational or absurd the claims are, mainly because people do not like to think they have been hoodwinked and 'their group' are wrong as it to affirms or validate their political views, despite the evidence staring them in the face that they are.   
Researchers term conspiracy theory believers as suffering 'schizophrenic', traits that include a tendency to be untrusting, ideologically eccentric and prone to having unusual perceptual experiences such as sensing stimuli that are not actually present.
Probably best to remember the next time someone tries to tell you that Bill Gates is trying to kill us all with vaccines or that Global Warming is a myth, hitting them with logic or evidence won't work, just smile and hide the sharp objects because you should never argue with a crazy mind.

Today Is...World Turtle Day

I wish the people who come up with the animals to have a National Day would pick some better animals but they have decided that it's Turtle's turn today so let's dig deep and see what we can do about the swimming version of a tortoise. 
To be honest i have been sitting here looking the blinking cursor for a few minutes and i'm coming up empty handed except for four Turtles, pizza eating Teenage Mutant Ninja ones or how they were known in the UK, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles to get around the strict violence in children's programming at the time.
Shouting 'cowabunga' and eating slices of pizza may not be typical of Turtles but where once they would be called Flippy or Snappy by parents who thought they were being original, now almost every Turtle purchased from a Pet Shop since the mid-80s would now be called either Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo or Michaelangelo which would really tick them off if they knew.
Would Michelangelo have painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling in such pain staking detail, spending four years laying on his back with a paintbrush trying to painstakingly capture the most absolute expression of beauty, creation and perfection imaginable only for hundreds of years later, kids would shout Cowabunga and hit each other with imaginary nun-chucks at the mention of his name.
In the cartoon's the turtles are named by their ninja teacher from a book on Renaissance art he found in the sewer but in real life the creators couldn’t come up with anything that sounded Japanese enough, so they named them after artists whose names conveniently ended with an 'O' and then ran out of them and went with Raphael instead.
Picasso dodged that particular bullet obviously.

Today Is...International Day for Biological Diversity

The United Nations describes Biodiversity as the living fabric of our planet, underpinning human wellbeing in the present and in the future, and its rapid decline threatens nature and people alike.
According to the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) at UNESCO, the main global drivers of biodiversity loss are climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and urbanization.
Of the 8 million animal and plant species on Earth, 1 million face the threat of extinction and threatens more than 40% of amphibians, 33% of coral reefs and a 68% average decline in the population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish since 1970.
Since 1980 the planet lost 100 million hectares of tropical forest and the United Nations have a strategy to regenerate ecosystems, conserve the harmony of our ecosystems where people learn to live in harmony with other living species and the British Government have a plan to reintroduce wild animals including wolves, lynx, beavers and wild boar to restore species hunted to extinction.
Sounds a great idea at first but then when you think about it, do we really want to reintroduce predators such as Lynx and Wolves back into our wildlife, the farmers are already bleating about foxes attacking their livestock, i can't think they would be happy about opportunistic predators such as the Lynx bothering
their sheep and if a pack of wolves decide lamb or chicken was on the menu it will be carnage.
Secondly, they were hunted to extinction the last time they were here and idiot hunters will be wetting themselves in the excitement at the thought of bagging a Wolf in their own backyard.
Beavers and Boars i am fine with but reintroducing dangerous species which have not been native here for centuries may need to be put back on the drawing board.

Keep Calm And Carry On

I am guessing everyone in the UK has seen the bright red 'Keep Calm and Carry On' message somewhere because it is everywhere, on posters, on t-shirts, cups and anywhere there is a space but we may see it but nobody did in World War Two.
The UK Government did print 2.5 million of the posters and planned to distribute them to lift the spirits of Brits whose menfolk were fighting NAZI Germany overseas and the plan was to plaster the nation with them when the massive civilian attacks began.
Eventually, German did launch the Blitz, but before then, Britain experienced a paper shortage and all of the Keep Calm posters were pulped and recycled and then forgotten about until the early 2000's when the Guardian Newspaper published a copy of it.
It became famous after that so if you find yourself telling someone to 'keep Calm and Carry On', you are not harking back to the World War II spirit with Vera Lynn and Winston Churchill keeping up moral, more harking back to the mid-naughtys with Take That, Tony Blair and that I Feel Like Chicken Tonight advert.

All Forgiven For Abuser Depp

You would hope that anyone convicted of domestic abuse would be shunned by all and sundry but the reaction to Johnny Depp turning up at the Cannes Film Festival proves that that isn't the case if you are famous enough.
The festival rolled out the red carpet and gave the actor a seven minute standing ovation for the Pirates of the Caribbean actor's first major movie role since millions around the world tuned in to watch his defamation trial against his former wife Amber Heard last year to hear him verbally abuse his then wife and send a text saying: 'Let’s burn Amber. Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.'
Other texts including calling her a: '50 cent stripper. Gold-digging, low-level, dime-a-dozen, mushy, pointless, dangling, overused flappy fish market.
I wouldn’t touch her with a goddam glove. I can only hope that karma kicks in and takes the gift of breath from her' and saying how he would 'smack the ugly cunt around'.
A high-profile battle came after the High Court ruled in 2020 that The Sun had not defamed Depp by referring to him as a 'wife beater' with the Judge finding 12 of Heard’s 14 violent abuse accusations were 'substantially true'.
How Depp found himself still a major actor in demand is disappointing enough but it sets an awful example to women everywhere that Heard wrote the Washington Post column which kick-started the whole thing to: 'Speak up against sexual violence' and she is the one forced to move abroad to stay out of the public eye while the dreadful and loathsome abuser is feted as a superstar.

public class HumanFemale {(30, 480));}

Ai is big news, it seems to be all anyone is talking about and the general consensus seems to be that it is madness to invent something smarter than ourselves and then hand over power to it and that's not just your general everyday Joe, there are many leaders of AI saying the same thing but as we are a particularly dense bunch sometimes, it is more than likely exactly what we will do.
Currently, Asimov's three law of robotics is all we have to guide us that our invention won't just turn around and obliterate us at the first opportunity so a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm and secondly, a robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law and thirdly, a robot must protect it's own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.    
All makes sense but my question is how would the programmers define the human so the robot knows which of the many creatures on the planet that it mustn't injure or harm in the first place?
'Hmmm...' said the programmer i asked as he dunked a digestive into his coffee and grabbed a pen and a sheet of A4 and said 'I assume you are talking Object Orientated Class Inheritance' to which i replied 'Obviously' while not telling him that was four words i had heard for the first time when he said them.   
'So Inheritance' he began, 'is one of the core concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP) languages and is a mechanism where you can to derive a class from another class for a hierarchy of classes that share a set of attributes and methods'.
Rather than saying WTF you talking about' i smiled and said some of my readers are not as up on Object Oriental Classes as us so you may need to simplify which came down to Human (A member of the species Homo sapiens of the genus Homo) which could be Male (XY Chromosome) or Female (XY Chromosome) which inherits the attributes of Human.   
So far so good but then it gets tricky because if we say Human, Female then try and insert what makes a Human Female we get into all sorts of problems so for example approximately 1 in every 2,000 baby girls are born with just an X Chromosome so in a population of 8bn, that's 2 million females outside of the definition at the first step.
If we use reproductive organs, around one in five women will have a hysterectomy at some point which shifts 20 million outside of the definition so we have a messy Human Female who may or may not have XX Chromosomes and may or may not have reproductive organs.
I made my excuses and left him scribbling lines between more boxes at this point but i still don't know what is a neat definition of a human so we make sure robots don't take out large swathes of us due to inadequate programming when they eventually take over.

 

Today Is...The End Of The World Day

What would you do if you knew the world was going to end? Definitely end, that is, there being nothing that could be done by governments, science or superheroes to avert the end of human life on earth?
There has been many end of the World prophecies. Most famous is probably Nostradamus who divided his time between growing rich inventing fake plague prevention pills and predicting the end of the World.
Ironically, his wife and children all died from the Plague later so although nobody would take his medicinal advice very seriously, many do take heed of his 'The End is Nigh' prophecies even if they have to rewrite them every time we wake up the morning after and find ourselves still here.
Biblical Scholars like to join in the fun, predicting that the World is going to end yet again according to something in their Bibles although as far as i can tell nobody righteous has yet ascended to heaven and they are still here, knocking along with us unworthy ones coveting our neighbours asses and whistling on a Sunday.
The Messiah Foundation International do preach that a massive asteroid is hurtling toward our planet, on course to collide in 2026 and in a shocking twist, will bring about the Rapture when the Lord will return and save everyone worth saving...etc etc but Isaac Newton may be known as the man who discovered Gravity but you do wonder just hard that apple hit him on the head as he calculated from the Book of Revelations that mankind will come to a screeching halt in 2060 although he didn't specify how it will all end.
The Muslims are much clearer with the details, they have the world ending with earthquakes and volcanoes in 2129 before it all turns a bit Japanese Manga Comic with a one-eyed beast battling the Messiah as Gog and Magog, whoever they are, descending upon the Earth.
There are no such monsters in the Judaism end days penciled in for 30th September 2239 when the Messiah will appear to help us prepare for his new kingdom of Heaven but it will only be for those who actively prepare for his arrival so as you won’t be allowed into the Heaven Party if you don’t help set it up so maybe make some sandwiches that day, not Ham ones though.
The Buddhists have their policies of peace and self-reflection, serenity and rebirth but in the year 84517 they say the Earth and all on it will burst into flames in a fiery explosion so there are some dates that the World will end to jot into your diary.
Norse Mythology is particularly imaginative with bad boy Loki escaping from ropes made of his son's intestines and hijacking a ship made of dead men's toenails before awakening the World Serpent who rises from the oceans and spews poison across the lands and skies until Earth sinks into the ocean leaving just two humans to repopulate what's left of the Earth.
Whichever one of the religions deities turn up to end things, none are particularly nice so maybe what we need is another religion, one where it doesn't all end in killer skeletons or Gods arriving in ships made of toenails to kill us all.
Despite the Planet and the creatures on it annoyingly refuse to go away and inconveniently refuse to expire, there is a great new conspiracy theory that says don't bother waiting around for the end of the world because it's already happened, we all just missed it. 
Now you are probably thinking that you would have noticed something like that happening, possibly picking up a few clues along the way but everything went Pop in 2012 when 'our collective consciousness was moved into a parallel universe and we are now living in a series of simulations with remnants of memories from our old life on the real Earth'.
When they put it like that it's obvious really, everything that has happened since 2012 is just in our collective imaginations and frankly, if they didn’t have all that proof to back them up then it would be impossible to take these guys seriously.

It's The Hope That Kills You

I spent the first 30 games of Arsenal's season waiting for the bubble to burst but it never so with 8 games to go thoughts began to creep in that perhaps, maybe, possibly, we may just do it and grab our first Premier League Title since 2004 and then the wheel's came off in spectacular fashion.
Obviously it feels churlish to moan about finishing second in the league and if that had been offered at the start of the season we wouldn't have just snapped off someone hand for it but taken the whole arm but to be so close and then see it fall away is pretty galling.
Our loss to Nottingham Forest means that Manchester City have now claimed their fifth Title in six years so congratulations to the men at the Etihad Stadium who other clubs will be looking towards and pondering on how amazing it is what spending £1.4 billion on players in the last decade will get you.

Tories On Way Down

The early 2010's in the UK was a very good time to be a Conservative, especially if you were an unscrupulous douchebag, and especially if you were one whose sole desire in life was to grab what you could and to hell with everyone else and over the last 14 years boy have the Political right been filling their ideological boots.  
David Cameron was all about slashing and burning as many public services as he could then Brexit came along and he tootled off to leave Theresa May and her policy of hostile environment for foreigners which Boris Johnson was happy to expand upon until Coronovirus came along and then he was too busy partying while telling us not to until his perpetual lying and cheating caught up with him and Liz Truss came along and within 44 days tanked the economy and was removed to be replaced with the current guy who got the job by default as he was the least worse of a bad bunch.
That's a quick run down of the last 14 years but as the recent local elections have shown, the Conservatives are not only due a slapdown but there are real fears that they could be out of power for decades so in that endearing way the right wing have, they have shifted even further to the extreme right which is why when Rishi Sunak jetted out of the country, all the right wing crackpots decided it was time to step forward to show their compassionate and caring side.   
It was not so much the tail wagging the dog but the fleas running the kennel as first up was Backbench tory MP Miriam Cates who claimed that a culture of Marxism in schools was destroying children’s souls and then Home Secretary Suella Braverman who insisted that she was all about cutting immigration so won't she be surprised this week when the figures come out that the legal immigration figures approved by her own department are at a record high.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is always good for a giggle and when Brexit secretary responsible for explaining the benefits of Brexit came up with 0 and he didn't disappoint as he admitted that the controversial voter ID law was a Tory attempt to manipulate the Labour vote down but resulted in his own side losing votes
as it was Conservative voters who were turned away without the proper photo id.
Tory MP Danny Kruger then attacked the LGBTQ+ Community by claiming that the only possible basis for a safe and successful society was for a family with both a mother and father while Anne Widdecombe, when asked about a family who said they could no longer afford to eat cheese due to the cost of living crisis, replied that families should no longer expect to be able to afford cheese sandwiches.
As the row over sewage being dumped in Britain’s waterways continues to rage, former cabinet minister Damian Green declared that when he was a boy, it was acceptable to go swimming in human effluent while Truss went on TV to rant about the UK-based Confucius Centres teaching pupils the Chinese language as China is a threat to the west.
More moderate Tories have been seen shaking their heads and apologising for their more over excitable colleagues and urging Rishi to sort them out and get his act together but with what now seems an unassailable lead for the Labour Party, Keir Starmer is cleverly living by the Napoleon quote that you never interupt your opponent when they are making a mistake and the Tories fighting like cats in a sack is the most fun they have given us over the past 14 miserable and disruptive years so let them carry on, it's great to watch them sink so very low. 

Today Is...The Final Buffy Ever

The first working television system was exhibited in January 1926 but it wasn't until March 1997 that it discovered it's true purpose when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was first shown on it.
Hard to believe that it's 26 years since the first episode of Buffy was aired, a show that tops my list of all time favourite programme's and whose DVD box set takes pride of place in my TV Cabinet, all seven seasons and 144 episodes of it.
Everything about the show was perfect, the cast, the story lines, the humour and the characters but after seven series it was bought to an end and as sad as it was, it went out at about the right time.
The last scene was the scooby gang stood watching the entire town of Sunnydale collapsing into the Hellmouth cavern, leaving a large crater and Dawn saying 'What are we going to do now?'
Well some did better than others afterwards, have never seen Xander or Cordelia in anything else but when i heard that there were plans afoot for a new Buffy film i was unsure exactly how to feel about the news.
Initially i was as happy as a pig in the brown stuff at the thought of the Scooby Gang once again picking up their stakes and freeing Sunnydale from hordes of vampires, demons and other things from various hell dimensions.
Then the thought, what if the new film is no good? It could destroy the whole Buffy experience if what lands at our cinema is anything like the awful original Buffy film.
Buffy the Vampire slayer spawned the likes of Twilight and True Blood but nothing vampire related that followed has caught the eye quite like Buffy. The characters were excellent although Buffy's whiny sister Dawn wouldn't have been missed if she had been squished by Olaf's hammer in the first episode she appeared in.
A part of me wants Buffy to stay in the past, immortalised as one of the greatest TV shows ever to appear and not risk being sullied by a new adventure but then part of me wants to see the slayer again with her perfect hair and stylish clothes dusting vampires and hearing Spike taunt her about Angel.
It's a tough choice but as much as it surprises me to say it, i think they should just leave Buffy and the beautiful corpse where it is because it will be different, or they will be older and it will be like bumping into the guy you had a crush on at school years later and realising that actually, he is not as handsome or cute as you remember.
I did later find out that the TV show probably wouldn't have existed if it hadn't have been for Dolly Parton whom as an executive at the production house convinced the company to acquire the television rights and hire Joss Whedon to write a pilot based on the Buffy film, and the rest is blood drenched, vampire gore history.
Us Buffy fans have the person who wrote the world's greatest song about tumbling outta bed and stumbling to the kitchen to pour ourselves a cup of ambition working from 9 to 5 to thank for giving us the best TV program ever.

More Dead Russian's Won't Stop The War

What are the plans for the Ukraine war which seems destined to go on until either Ukraine surrenders, Russia runs out of weapons or Donald Trump makes it back into the White House and cuts Zelenskyy loose on behalf of his pal and holder of THAT video tape, Vladimir Putin.
The current game plan seems to be to keep shoveling more powerful weapons towards Ukraine and the UK has chosen to do their bit by handing over tanks and following that up with delivering long-range missiles to the Kiev Government The Storm Shadow’s range of 200 miles make it obviously appealing to Ukraine who's current US Himars missiles have a range of 47 miles and desire more heavier weapons to defend their territory from the invading Russians.
The West therefore seem steadfastly committed to war and appear keen to escalate the situation with the strategy seeming to be the way to force the Russians to back down is by giving the Ukraine the capability to increase the cost to Russia with the costs being dead Russians which will raise to such a level that Russia will withdraw.
What will happen is that Russia, nuclear armed remember, will escalate their own attacks and further violence and death will ensue and Russians and Ukrainians will die in much greater numbers.
Handing over weapons to help one nation kill more of another nation makes me very uneasy and i have yet to hear how bigger and badder weapons will make an awful situation any better but more importantly, i have yet to hear of anyone making any overtures of peace talks.
If your strategy depends upon Russia being dragged out of the war due to the leader being forced out by a rapidly climbing death toll of it's troops then that is a long wait so where are the leaders clambering for peace talks because throwing fuel onto a fire, or in this case weapons which can kill more and at a further distance, is the master plan of halfwits.

Today Is...World Baking Day

Many things in the kitchen are dangerous and most TV shows come with the warning for kids not to try this at home but they need to send a memo to some adults as well because it didn't take long for my family to look unnervingly at my baking efforts and kindly tell me that they thought my skill-set probably lied elsewhere but my baking roads are always paved with good intentions, just that they are usually followed by the sound of things being spat out into the bin.
Unfortunately salt and sugar look very much alike but even i have not yet managed to make cookies as awful as one girl who decided the best way to grieve over her grandfather dying was to do some baking for her school chums.
After they cooled and feeling very pleased with her efforts, she took them to school and handed then out to her classmates and when asked what was in the slightly grainy tasting cookies, she told the that she had included a secret ingredient in honour of her dead Grandparent.
Quite a moment must have followed as she assured them that there was not some kind of hallucinogenic drug or her Grandfather remaining heart medicine in the mix, she wasn't that mad, it was just the usual butter, caster sugar, plain flour, cinnamon, milk chocolate chips, oh and her Grandfathers ashes.
She had decided that it would be a fitting sendoff for her to add him to the cookies and share them with their friends so took his cremated remains and baked them into her cookies.
The school reported her to the police who came, scratched their heads for a bit and decided to drop it as they wouldn't know what crime to charge her with.

Today Is...World Whisky (Whiskey) Day

There is some confusion over Whisky, Whiskey, Scotch and Bourbon but it is essentially all the same thing, fermented grains with some yeast thrown into the vat at some point and then it goes into a barrel and 12 years later you've got whisky, whiskey or Scotch or Bourbon. It's just that simple.
Whiskey (or Whisky) means 'water of life' in Irish which says a whole lot about our Irish cousins but not as much as the story behind the Great Dublin Whiskey Fire of June, 1875.
A fire began at Malone’s, a malthouse and storeroom in the Irish Capital and as the The storeroom contained upwards of 5,000 barrels of highly flammable Whiskey and thousands of wooden barrels filled with a flammable substance and surrounded by fire, it was never going to end well.
Casks burst and the flaming booze spilled everywhere, flooding out of the warehouse doors, spilling down the narrow neighbouring streets like a flaming alcoholic river where the Irish Examiner picks up the story and says: 'It should be mentioned that in some of the streets through which much of the liquor from the stores ran, many of the crowd indulged to excess, drinking in some instances out of their shoes and hats, in which they had collected the whiskey.'
Thirteen people died, but none of the deaths were from burning or smoke inhalation, they were all from alcohol poisoning, as booze-thirsty Dubliners lapped up the free whiskey from the street and drank themselves to death.
My choice of Whiskey would be Jack Daniels which is very smooth and can technically be termed as a bourbon but it's maker's insist that it is a Tennessee Whiskey but the people of Lynchburg, Tennessee where it is made will just have to take my word for it, the county has been dry since prohibition so not a drop of alcohol can be bought or sold within its boundaries although the rules don't count on the Jack Daniel’s Distillery premises.

Today Is...Endangered Species Day

Our Royal family are not the sharpest knives in the drawer at the best of times but even they must have realised that stopping off to go hunting on the way to launching a campaign aimed at saving wildlife was not the best move.
William and Harry (before Harry was exiled from the Royals) fronted a campaign called 'Let's Unite for Wildlife!' but animals don't need enemies with idiots like the Royal Chuckle Brothers protecting them, keen to prove their caring sharing side for wildlife by bravely blasting huge holes in them from a safe distance as all hunters do.
I've always thought that if you want to kill an animal, you should not use a high powered rifle from a safe distance, you should go cavemen and kill it with your bare hands. Gives the animal a fighting chance and see if you can take out the scary beast with a few kicks and well placed uppercuts and may the best man/tiger win.
One Australian MP, when criticised for culling Camels in the outback from a helicopter said that: 'To be shot from a helicopter is actually quite humane. If I was a camel, I'd prefer to just get it in the head' but i would wager if he was a camel he would prefer not to be shot through the head at all. I'd even say it was a fair bet that he would prefer to be left alone and not have some beered up Aussie trying to mow him down from the safety of a helicopter.
Steve Irwin, who was always up for a scrap with anything as long as it was deadly, would be disappointed in the lot of you down there.
Hunting has contributed to the extinction and near extinction of countless animal species all over the world with almost 16,000 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish on the endangered list of threatened species and many more hunted out of existence.
The journal Biological Conservation says insects could also vanish within a century at the current rate of decline and the heavy use of pesticides, urbanisation and climate change are significant factors.
'The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems' according to the review with over 40% of insect species in decline and a third endangered.
My first reaction is to say good, bloody insects but reading on it explains the implications for humans as insects are 'essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems and that 'we humans cannot survive without insects'.
So maybe i was a bit hasty in cheering and ushering in the demise of insects, an insect free sit in the park in summer is quite lightweight compared to the continued survival of the human race.    
With that in mind i am willing to make a compromise and accept that we need some insects but Crane Flies can sod off as can mosquitoes, earwigs, woodlice, horse flies and midges and we could do without flies and the World (and picnics) would be a much better place without hornets and wasps and i am even willing to allow spiders to continue being if my milk-bottle white arms and legs remain free of bitey, stingy things this summer.

Today Is...International Day of Light

The website for the International Day of Light states that Light is important and celebrated because throughout thousands of years of history, humans have relied on light to see and learn about the universe and still today astronomers are looking and learning about galaxy and the universe which blew a big hole in my original post which was about how a US Senator got the light above my garage fixed.
Obviously the light the day is celebrating is of a more scientific bent and not ensuring my safety after parking my car so lets delve into the Universe which is pretty big, so big that it has to be measured in light years which is the distance in a year light will travel, measured at 5.88 trillion miles.
Our Milky Way is 100 light years across which is piddling compared to the largest galaxy we have discovered which is IC 1101 which is 120,000 light-years wide so if you set off to cross it, you might need to take a packed lunch.
Einstein said in his Theory of Special Relativity that nothing can travel faster than light but particle physicists have detect neutrinos traveling faster so pffft, Einstein, what did he know although it does potentially raise the possibility of time travel and with no DeLorean or a flux capacitor in sight.
What i don't really understand is why does going faster than the speed of light mean going back in time? I wish I had paid more attention in Science lessons at school but it all seemed very boring at the time.
Just like Jennifer Anniston on the L'Oreal adverts, you don't need to understand the science bit to have shiny, beautiful hair or in this case, to go back in time with the weekends European lottery numbers or persuade Boris Johnson's grandfather to wear extra tight underpants but all the time we have the Sun we will have light for half of the day, the other half all you need is an American Senator with an email account. Thanks Bernie!

Today Is...International Day of Families

When you're a kid it's kind of fun to have the family over but when we get older and move away to make our own lives, we only tend to see our families at special occasions such as Birthdays, Marriages and Christmas and those are generally just the immediate ones, the one's you could potentially get a new kidney from should you ever damage yours in a four week whisky bender incident.
Our world is built around a family structure. We're not like animals who have young, train them in the ways of killing prey, and then just let them go, we stay together giving each other likes on Facebook and hoping that the relative nobody likes doesn't mention he is coming to our area soon and where shall we meet up for a coffee.
Families do come together on occasions and there are some pitfalls to be avoided such as divorce which can be hard on the family reunion. After all, marriage made someone part of the family, and now they're gone but if you bring up the spouse, it's hurtful, but if you ignore the spouse's absence, it's weird.
If they turn up with a new spouse and let's say your 50-year-old recently divorced Auntie shows up to a family christening with a 19-year-old Latvian student, you obviously won't ask what happened to Uncle Tim but you know everyone is itching to ask her.
Some families just don't get on but if you think your family is bad then consider the family of the man we sing about every Christmas, Good King Wenceslas.
His father, the King, died in battle and his grandmother took the throne and was assassinated by her daughter who was usurped by her son Wenceslas who was then beheaded by his own brother which should put your slightly strained conversation at the family Christmas meal in perspective.

Exciting Innovation's In The Pipeline

Us humans are a complex bunch, we are capable of creating things of immense beauty as well of being capable of depraved cruelty to each other and create inventions which can immeasurably improve all our lives as well as invent horrific weapons to wipe out millions of souls in the blink of an eye.  
Innovation and technology have played a significant role in shaping the world we live in and back in the 1970's and 80's we had a TV programme called Tomorrow's World which would showcase innovations which could be available to us at some point in the future such as the Home Computer, cashless transactions, mobile phones and even the Internet.  
Although we have no idea what the next innovation will be, i asked a group of scientists which exciting things are in the pipeline which will could change the world as much as those shown to us by a low budget 70s show?
First up is 3D Printing and not just for manufacturing as per now but we are tantalisingly close to printing living tissue, including organs such as hearts and livers for transplants.
Staying in the Medical Theatre, the use of Artificial Intelligence to diagnose and treat diseases quicker by analysing more accurately and quicker than any human could leading to earlier and more unique, targeted treatments based on a patient’s genetics, lifestyle, and medical history.
I won't even pretend to understand what Fusion Power is about but Science is making significant progress in it and apparently it has the potential to provide a clean and virtually limitless source of energy using the Earths abundant hydrogen sources such as water and the several experimental fusion reactors are currently under development.
Red Dwarf famously had Nanobots and the Boys From The Dwarf were ahead of the curve because Nanotechnology is almost a thing and involves the manipulation of matter on an incredibly small scale, thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.
It's uses include targeting and killing diseased cells in the body as well as electronics, manufacture, construction and pretty much everything in between so certainly exciting and potentially World changing developments and in classic 1970's BBC understatement: 'It's clever isn't it'.

Solving A Problem Like Global Warming

At Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, they have measured atmospheric CO2 at it's highest level in human history, a staggering 423.01 ppm.
To put that into context, at the start of the Industrial Revolution the atmospheric CO2 was between 260 and 280 ppm and had been  during the 10,000 years up to the mid-18th century.
Scientists, using Antarctic and Greenland ice cores have pointed out that the current rates of increase of the concentration of the major greenhouse gases are unprecedented over at least the last 800,000 years and when we passed the 400 ppm threshold, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere may be the highest since the mid Pliocene warm period, 14 million years ago.
Obviously, unless you are terminally stupid, you know that that more Carbon in the Atmosphere leads to Global Warming and the catastrophic results of extreme weather hence the record breaking climate events but for some of the more hard of thinking amongst us, that is too much for their tiny brains so they either ignore it, say it's too late and we can't do anything about it now or unbelievably refuse the evidence of their own somewhat slow senses and say things like climate change is a myth.
It is true that while we have known about the consequences of Global Warming and Climate Change for decades with the first warnings coming in the early 20th Century, we have been reluctant to do anything to sort it out and some have even said that Capitalism could fix it despite it being Capitalism which caused it in the first place so it seems we need to kick Capitalism into touch to begin solving it.
This is good on two levels because getting rid of Capitalism would not only solve Climate Change but it would literally fix almost every other problem on the Planet right now so what's not to like about it?

Today Is...English Colonists Establish First Permanent Settlement

Of all Great Britain's children, Canada is the one we boast about to other nations, the clean cut polite one of our offspring that everyone likes, the sort of country that would excuse themselves from the table to do a spot of vacuuming and washing up.
Australia has always been the child that we are wary of wanting to show to polite company, lest it would belch loudly and try to set light to it's own farts at the lunch table.
America has always been the one we try and forget about springing from our empirical womb, the sort of country that us parents would receive phone calls from the school inviting us up for a meeting as it has been stealing the other countries lunch money and has been trying to look up the skirts of the girls.
As Britain was at the start of its Empire Building years, it found America and decided we'll have it and in 1607 a bunch of colonists left the green and pleasant land and after five months of puking over the side of a ship, turned up in what would become Virginia and met the local Native Indian inhabitants.
Rather than bringing supplies like any sensible people, the colonists relied on the prayers to their man in the clouds to keep them fed and healthy but God told them to sod off so they ended up begging off Native American's which went ok at the start but they eventually got on like a house on fire with lots of screaming, panic and people running for safety although the Colonists were doing a good job of messing up things themselves by keep dying and stupidly burning the place down and the leader accidentally set off a powder bag which was in his lap and severely charring his own nads so he had to return to Blightly for treatment.
Despite the first lot being complete numpties, America went on to free themselves from the chains of the oppressive British, land a man on the moon and give us Buffy the Vampire Slayer but one can't wondering though, if America hadn't got all cranky and just paid the extra tax and not thrown all that tea into the harbour, would it have become another loved and respected Canada and not...well, America?

This Summer 's Heatwave

Despite all the sophisticated equipment, weather can only be forecast accurately for the the next 48 hours and after that it is a best guess based on probability on conditions that could change so to ask a weatherman if the below average temperatures for May is a sign that summer isn't going to be
as oppressively hot as last year when the record 40.3C was hit in July, is met with a shrug and a 'dunno'.
What we do know is that Summer is on it's way and the temperatures will rise so the MET Office modelling system takes all the information from recent historical data, global weather, La Niña, the effects of climate change and the typical conditions we'd normally expect to create a seasonal outlook and present the probability of weather conditions for May to July.
The temperature outlook for May to July 2023 is that there is a 5% chance this period will be cool, a 60% chance it will be near average and a 35% that it will be hot so based on that, the best chance is we can expect average temperatures in this period with a much greater chance of it turning out warmer (35%) as opposed to cooler (5%) than normal.  
As for if we are due to get a heatwave, that depends on where you live in the country as a heatwave is three consecutive days above 25°C in Scotland and Northern Ireland and between 26°C and 28°C in the rest of the UK.   
What this all means is we can expect a average or above average temperatures this summer and you will need to check your weather app to see which days are going to be average or above average but it is unlikely we will break any heat records this year.
The MET Office state that the 40.3°C of last year was a once every 1000 years event but as the climate continues to warm and weather records tumble, we are finding that these weather events are happening alarmingly less than once a millennium now.

Today Is...The Eurovision Song Contest

Today is one of the best Saturday's on the calendar because love it or hate it, the evening's television will be dominated by the Eurovision Song Contest and by midnight we will know which country are the top songsters and can expect hordes of brightly coloured Eurovision fans piling into their nation next year, as they earn the honour of hosting it.
As the contest now includes non-European nations such as Israel, it is becoming more of an international affair and with an audience of over 250 million, the Eurovision song contest is quite right to call itself the 'Worlds Largest Party' and a few years ago the spangly invite went out to Australia to join in.
Not exactly a hotbed of musical talent, Australia may seem a strange choice but it turns out that Eurovision is massively popular in Australia and has been broadcast annually to the country probably farthest away from Europe for the past 30 years.
The Eurovision purists don't like it and say that they should start their own song contest with New Zealand and the Soloman Islands if they like it so much.
It's been two decades since the UK won the Eurovision song contest and we haven't bothered the top of the leaderboard since and wheel out the 'It's not about winning but the taking part' mantra but in all honesty, winning it would be nice and last year we actually had a very good song but had the bad luck of picking the same year that Ukraine was invaded by Russia and they won the song contest despite having a song which would in normal circumstances see them finish the night on the right hand side of the final scoreboard.
Ukraine may have won it but we are hosting it this year due to Kiev being not the safest place to host a song singing competition at the moment.
So the UK probably won't win it this year and will invariably find ourselves on the wrong side of the screen with the other spotty, wheezy unpopular kids such as France and Moldova but i will still be on my sofa with my homemade scorecard and a blind optimism that this year, the UK can win the bloody thing which will last about 10 minutes into the voting section when it will become obvious that we won't.

Today Is...International Nurses Day

Nurses always top all the most trusted profession polls while Government ministers, estate agents and journalists not so much and as we all need a nurse at some point in our lives, i consider them one of the most important people we will ever cross in our lives which is why it is so shameful the way they have been treated by the UK Government, we can only hope that when any of the politicians denying them a decent payrise are in hospital, the nurse responsible for their pain relief is off sick that day.
Due to the awful treatment of our nurses, NHS bosses are concerned that Nurses will be upping sticks and taking their bedside manner somewhere where they will be more appreciated and some are looking across the Atlantic to where they are looking for nurses to fill the estimated shortfall of 100,000 nurses at US hospitals.
The average wage of a nurse in the USA is £40,000 while in the UK it is £30,000 so it is understandable why some of the caring profession could be lured abroad which is ironic considering we poach them from all around the world in the first place but why should a nurse decide to ignore the call from Uncle Sam. Let me explain:

1: Wild Animals. In Britain the most dangerous animal we have is a hedgehog while in America they have wolves, bears, rattlesnakes, sharks and something called fire ants. Stay here and it's picking hedgehog needles out of someones foot. Go over there and it's sucking snake venom out of a sweaty Texan's backside.    
2: Tea: You will never get a decent cup of tea, they drink it cold and the don't use kettles. Make a cup of tea, leave it for two hours and then drink it and that's what you will be drinking for the foreseeable future.  
3: Driving. Americans drive on the opposite side of the road and they don't have roundabouts, instead they have a complicated system of crossroads. If you make it to work with your car intact you can consider yourself fortunate. Stay here and it's mirror, signal and manoeuvre and a leisurely drive at 20mph behind a Nissan Micra.
4: History: Britain gave the World modern nursing and has a rich history. There are beds in British hospitals that were built when the Pilgrim fathers were still on friendly terms with the Natives.  
5: Spelling: While Britain gave the Americans their language, they decided that 5 vowels was one vowel too many and dropped the letter 'u'. Good luck trying to explain that to the man with the ulcus cruris or pustuled uvula .
6: Guns. America has completely mad gun laws so while in Britain it's fluffing the pillows of the man having his gall stones removed, in America you will be dealing with multiple gun shot wounds all day every day. On top of that you will have to live among a community with a larger arsenal than the 16th Air Assault Brigade.
7: Humour: You won't be at work all the time and at some point you will have to turn on a TV. Do that in Britain and it's Blackadder, QI, Red Dwarf, Monty Python, Downton Abbey. In America it's Seinfeld and repeats of the X-Files all day.
8: Prince Harry: He is still there which means he isn't here.

So that's your choices Nurses, go over to America and drink cold tea, get eaten by a bear if you survive the crossroads and have Prince Harry on yet another national tour of TV studios bemoaning his lack of privacy while you relax or stay here, use the letter u and marvel at normal non fatal ants.

Today Is...Fair Trade Day

It wasn’t very long ago that a fruit or vegetable was just a fruit or vegetable and you didn’t know where they came from and you didn't give a second thought about the farmers who grew them or the amenities in their villages.
You just picked up your purchase and continued around the supermarket aisles, none the wiser until Fairtrade International came along and attempted to make the marketplace more moral.
It must have worked because 93% of British shoppers can correctly identify the Fair Trade logo and on the face of it who could possibly be against the buying and selling of products that makes certain that the people who produce the goods receive a fair price therefore bringing a better standard of living for poor farmers in developing countries.
The problem happens in the Supermarkets when consumers look at the price of their Fair Trade products and then fall back on the usual cheaper, conventional alternatives which means less sales.
In 2016, of all the coffee grown as Fairtrade, only 34% of it could be sold at the Fair trade price, 47% of Cocoa and 5% of tea. With no takers for the rest, the farmers had no choice but to unload the surplus into the standard market and receive the lower prices that the market paid.
Obviously the conventional price differential shows how much less the chocolate or coffee farmers are being paid against the Fair Trade price but the bottom line for consumers is the willingness or ability to pay the higher price to buy fair-trade products.
It is the same dilemma faced by consumers for organic vegetables, they are more expensive and the ultimate decision is always going to come down to cost so it's one thing promoting and supporting Fairtrade standards and even aiming your advertising at consumers asking them to consider if paying more for a product that has been sourced and produced ethically and consider the harm it may be causing to others when faced with a similar product on the supermarket shelf which costs 50% less.
Obviously it is a worthwhile cause but when you are on a budget, paying more for something you can get cheaper is always going to win out.

Today Is...Billy Joel's Birthday

With Billy 'Uptown Girl' Joel hitting the big 74 today (Happy Birthday Billy by the way), considering that he has banging out tunes over a 50 year career, he doesn't seem very appreciated in Britain where he has only had 5 top ten hits and 3 of them came in 1983 from the Innocent Man album so not a great return for him but two people who did appreciate him were my parents and it was an unusual day if we went without hearing a belt of Piano Man or My Life coming from the record player.
As my parents were fans, i sort of fell into his music by osmosis as i grew up and whenever i heard one of his songs in a Supermarkets, i always found myself singing along to his ditties as i priced up the cleaning fluids.
Before Uptown Girl reminded everyone that he was still around, his big song was Piano Man and it was only fairly recently i discovered it comes with a music video although it didn't help it much in the UK charts although it was probably the best number 136 we ever saw.
Probably my favourite Billy Joel songs is 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant', mainly because halfway through singing about Brenda and Eddie in the summer of '75, it changes to a completely different song and then ends up back where it started and the two in one songs always seem to appeal to me.
So there we have it, i have a soft spot for Christie Brinkley's ex-hubby (a magnificent bit of punching above his weight) and could probably happily sing along to most of his records and i blame my parents although it could have been worse, they could have been Country and Western fans.

Today Is...Ascension Day

If you are wondering why as an Atheist, i have so many religious days in this Today Is...series, it's because my writing partner is a man of the cloth and whenever i say hmmm..we need something for such and such a day he pulls out a religious day which is obvious really because the Church has more religious days than it has scandals but if we have nothing else then we go with it, such as today, if only to annoy him by making fun of it.
Today is Ascension Day because there is not enough Holy Days over Easter with Lent, Palm Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, they go and have one 40 days after Easter Egg Day and it is to commemorates Jesus going back home to heaven.
John Lennon got it right in his imagine song when he said 'Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky but at that time it was believed that the Cosmos was split into three distinct parts, Heaven above, Hell below and Earth in the Middle and for anyone looking up towards the sky, the blue sky was the floor of heaven but there was some frantic rewriting of all that when telescopes were invented and humans developed a Space Program and found only clouds and the ozone layer above our heads.
Now Christians believe that Heaven is not actually a physical place but a state of being but originally they believed that this world would be transformed into heaven but anyone who had read a newspaper recently or watched the New on TV knows that never happened or if it has then Heaven certainly isn't what they expected.
You see, the thing about Heaven is that Heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in Heaven, like singing, talking to God, watering pot plants whereas Hell, on the other hand, is for people who like the other sorts of things like adultery, pillage, torture, those general areas but my personal favourite out of all the many heaven's the differing religious folk have is the great big field of the Egyptians called the Elysian Fields.
It is a land of eternal peace, with magnificent crops and bread and beer which never goes stale and who doesn't like the idea of bread and beer that never goes stale so pencil me in for that one.